In the basement of St. Anselm Church on the west end of the Boston
archdiocese on a cool summer night, first appearances would suggest business as
usual. Its a retirement party for a beloved priest, and there are all the
church basement essentials: wood paneling, fluorescent lights, linoleum floors,
women in pastels, men whose ties dont go with their shirts, an electric
piano pumped through mounted speakers, ham and potatoes, and -- perhaps
especially fitting for Boston -- beer.

But then, as has been the trend in the countrys fourth largest
diocese, things begin to shift from the ordinary to the extraordinary. A group
of parishioners approach a microphone to perform an original song for the
entertainment of their retiring pastor. The packed house, pressed together at
banquet tables littered with soggy paper plates and crumpled napkins, lets out
a collective and expectant hushed giggle as the music starts.

The group begins in chorus: Blow it up! And start all over again!
Blow it up! And start all over again! They are smiling and clapping the
beat. Soon the whole room -- young and old and plenty of each -- is smiling and
clapping and singing with them. They are singing about their archdiocese and
they are full of joy.

Something is happening in Boston.

At a glanceFacing a priest shortage, shifting demographics and
financial strain, they Boston archdiocese is in the midst of the largest wave
of parish closures in the history of the American church. Catholics in the
country's fourth largest diocese, still healing from the sex abuse scandal and
accusing the diocese of moving too fast and disclosing too little, are using
sit-ins, litigation and legislation to force accountability from their
hierarchy.

From the half-lit chapel upstairs at St. Anselm, the sounds of the
basement celebration are muted. Sleeping bags, pillows and stuffed animals wait
on pews. Two made-up beds topping blowup mattresses sit side by side near the
chapels rear entrance. A young family of six is spending the night. The
chapel has been occupied, in the literal and tactical sense, for the
better part of a year by a core group of parishioners desperate to save their
church from the diocese-wide reconfiguration plan of Archbishop Sean
OMalley. The archbishop ordered nearly one fourth of Bostons 357
parishes closed early last year, citing demographic shifts, a shortage of
priests and financial strain.

St. Anselm is one of the 83 parishes ordered suppressed, or
shuttered and sold, by OMalley in 2004, a liquidation unprecedented in
the American Catholic church. And it is one of nine churches to resist its
suppression decree through direct action (night and day occupation) aimed at
thwarting a process many believe is forcing the people in the pews to pay for
the mistakes -- and crimes -- of their hierarchy.

Bernard Swain, an experienced private consultant to parishes and other
religious communities in the archdiocese, believes that the church had to do
something. In fact, said Swain, that something should have
happened beginning someplace between 10 and 20 years ago.

The decline in priests, Swain continued, like the
decline in the physical condition of the parishes, like the pending crisis in
the finances of the diocese, like the demographic trends that were emptying out
a lot of the urban parishes and overfilling some of the suburban parishes, none
of those things came suddenly. None of them was unpredictable. All of them
could have been foreseen by the early 90s or middle 90s.

Instead, he said, by the time OMalley came on the scene, all
of those trends had reached crisis proportions. The driving force behind
reconfiguration and its rigorous and controversial timetable, Swain added, can
only be understood as crisis management.

Following the money

The most immediate crisis was financial. In November 2003, OMalley
reported an annual deficit of $10 million in the archdioceses Central
Fund, which covers administrative costs and other centralized spending of the
archdiocese. One month later, TheBoston Globe reported a $20
million deficit from a leaked 2004 audit of the Central Fund. That same month,
OMalley reported an unfunded pension liability of $80 million. And in May
of this year, the archbishop reported that the archdiocese had not contributed
to its Clergy Retirement Fund for 16 years, between 1986 and 2002, despite
nearly $5 million per year donated by parishioners and earmarked for the
support of retired priests. The archdiocese insists the money went to another
fund set up for the benefit of priests and has promised to release financial
statements related to clergy assistance funds at the end of 2006. Critics say
the delay does little to assuage doubts.

In recent testimony before a state legislative committee on a proposed
bill that would require the Boston archdiocese to open its books to public
scrutiny -- forcing the chancery to make good on its verbal and written
commitments to financial transparency -- Massachusetts Secretary of State
William Galvin said the archdiocese had liquidated $200 million in church real
estate since OMalleys ascent to archbishop in 2003. There is little
clear indication where that money has gone.

Suzanne Hurley, a parishioner at St. James the Great in Wellesley, a
church that has been in vigil since Halloween 2004, speculates that all of the
hurt, tension and mistrust that exists in the archdiocese today over parish
closings and news of severe financial troubles may have been avoided if the
archdiocese had come clean with the what and the why -- and then
made the how a subject of discussion instead of a decree.

If they had said to us: How can we come together and fix
it?  said Hurley, you could have had parish councils and
clusters of parishes come together and say, This is what we can do and
this is what we can raise. 

With the archdiocese, Hurley continued, its a matter of
We mismanaged the money you gave us, we moved and promoted priests who
should not have been allowed with children, and now were asking you to
pay even further by giving us your churches. 

The archdiocese has maintained, against a current of suspicion and
criticism, that reconfiguration is not about money only. But in interviews with
more than three-dozen Catholics in Boston over a one-week visit in June, money
was central to talk of the fast-changing relationship between hierarchy and
flock that has seen a historical wave of church occupations, lawsuits against
the chancery, and determined responses from city hall and the state house.

The response to OMalleys reconfiguration, said William
Clark, a professor of religious studies at Holy Cross College, has set an
entirely new standard of behavior between the chancery and the
faithful.

On the one hand, Clark said, people who have disagreed
deeply with administrative decisions of the church have not just gotten
over it or quietly walked away from active participation in the church.
They have insisted on claiming an active voice in the church in direct
opposition to the clerical leadership, and they are showing an inclination to
use this voice to demand accountability in general, not just in connection with
their single issue.

David Castaldi, a former chancellor for the Boston archdiocese, said,
Boston is unusual but not unique. The same issues that have driven
reconfiguration here will drive a need for reconfiguration in other
dioceses.

Castaldi is a board member of Voice of the Faithful, a group formed in
reaction to the clergy sex abuse crisis with the purpose of seeking reform of
church structures. He is an adviser to Voice of the Faithful on parish
finances, and he heads an oversight committee charged by the archdiocese with
monitoring the use of funds generated by the suppressed parishes. He sees it as
inevitable that other dioceses will have to go to school on
Boston.

A painful process

Boston has been through a reconfiguration process before. In the two
decades prior to Cardinal Bernard Laws resignation, the archdiocese cut
its parishes from 402 to 357.

OMalleys reconfiguration decreed a greater number of
closures over a far shorter period, and many more suppressions than the less
dramatic mergers of past reconfiguration.

Even those who support the closing of parishes in the archdiocese are
critical of OMalleys process, which went something like this: In
late 2003, underscoring his intention to work his way swiftly and decisively
through reconfiguration, OMalley announced his decision to institute a
diocesan-wide freeze -- effective immediately -- on the naming and reappointing
of pastors, capital fundraising campaigns, buying or selling of property, new
building construction, or nonessential renovations.

Then, in January 2004, OMalley told Bostons parish-level
leadership that they had eight weeks to come up with recommendations on which
parishes should be closed. Around 80 parish clusters were given two
questions to answer on deadline: If the archbishop needs to close a
parish in your cluster for the greater good of the archdiocese, how would you
recommend that your cluster of parishes be reconfigured and why? And,
If the archbishop needs to close more than one parish in your cluster,
how many parishes would you recommend for closure and how would you recommend
that your cluster be reconfigured and why?

It was, for many, a painful process. While many urged him to slow the
pace of reconfiguration, OMalley announced his intention to speed the
process, forewarning suppressed-parishes-to-be that they would have a maximum
of 16 weeks to shut themselves down.

The archbishop repeatedly addressed criticism by emphasizing the
spiritual and institutional logic behind reconfiguration, which frustrated many
who were not asking Why a reconfiguration process? but Why
this process?

In a live television address to Bostons Catholics, marking his
first six months as archbishop, OMalley appealed to local Catholics for
understanding and cooperation as the archdiocese marched forward.

In some older neighborhoods, OMalley said, a
one-mile walk can take you past four or five Catholic churches. We just
cant sustain that kind of reduplication. Under the best circumstances it
is impractical; in our present situation it would be impossible.

Months later, with parishes in vigil grabbing local, national and
international headlines OMalley made another appeal to his flock in a
letter to all members of the archdiocese.

Closing parishes is the hardest thing I have ever had to do in 40
years of religious life, he wrote. I never imagined I would have to
be involved in anything so painful or so personally repulsive to me as this. At
times I ask God to call me home and let someone else finish this job, but I
keep waking up in the morning to face another day of reconfiguration. So when
people ask why I am doing this, I can only say it is because I love the church
and want to give my life to the service of the church. If difficult decisions
are not made now, the mission of the church will be seriously compromised in
the future.

People make difficult decisions all the time, said Hurley.
We make them every day in the business world. Things dont go our
way but we know why.

Looking back on the process, it is the lack of direct communication with
the archbishop that bothers her most. Word of critical decisions came to the
people of St. James through TheBoston Globe or written decrees
delivered by Federal Express. What they wanted was face time. Her parish had
questions, and in a centralized system of governance like the archdiocese, they
knew it was the ear of the leader they needed.

Hurley, a mother of two, sat in a pew near the front of the chapel at
St. James the Great. Just back from dropping her daughter at basketball camp,
she had exactly 20 minutes to spend talking to this reporter before heading off
to work at a life sciences company.

I want to be a viable asset to my church. I dont just want
to be a monetary value. I want to walk in and know that when my children sit
here with me, that they know that this is their church too.

Instead, said Hurley, We fought for two years with my son saying:
Whats a pedophile? and Whats sexual abuse?
and Why arent the priests in prison? 

Now, she said, her son is asking: Why are they taking our
church?

When you come into the church and your own children are
questioning the people that are up there its not the leadership
that I want my children looking up to.

This kind of crossroads talk is not uncommon in Boston these days. Many
parishioners who did not give up on the church during the steady strain of the
sexual abuse scandal found themselves on the edge of walking away when
reconfiguration hit their parishes. But for many, it was the vigil that brought
them back -- at least to the precipice.

I admit I was probably a passive Catholic. I did pray, pay
and obey really well. But, Hurley said, when they started the
reconfiguration it became personal to us. We have all seen our community
become stronger because we have all taken ownership of our faith, which I think
many of us didnt have before.

I think that what we are doing is respectful and
appropriate, Hurley said. I think what bothers the archdiocese more
than anything is that we are not compliant.

Saving St. Albert the Great

Noncompliance saved St. Albert the Great in Weymouth, the first parish
to go into vigil in August 2004, and, in May 2005, the first to see its
suppression decree reversed. At a folding table in the basement of St. Albert,
parish council member Mary Akoury, 68, laid out a copy of that days
Sunday bulletin (parishioners had produced the Sunday bulletin every week of
their 10-month vigil) and pointed to a list of committees. There were 20.

We were running a parish without a pastor, Akoury said.

There were committees for hospitality, adult faith formation,
housekeeping, fundraising, the parish health ministry, and on and on. (The
Parish Council and Finance Committee, common to any parish, were not
listed).

The parish had become completely self-sufficient during its vigil. St.
Albert reopened with more than $40,000 in its utilities fund and $85,000 in its
legal fund.

How many of the committees existed prior to the vigil?

None, Akoury said.

Now that the parish had a pastor, there were no plans to dissolve the
new committees (except for the vigil committee). They are going to be
consultants to the pastor and the parish council, Akoury said.

Upstairs, at St. Alberts first Mass since the archdiocese had
reversed its suppression decision, the pews were full.

Latecomers stood in the back as Akoury made announcements. There were
positions that needed filling: two part-time cooks, money counters. Were the
people who formerly handled these responsibilities still interested?

And we desperately need the carpets cleaned, she said.
There has been a lot of traffic over the last 10 months.

Then, turning to more contentious issues, she announced: We will
be receiving all assets taken at the time of suppression.

Applause.

Though there seemed to be much jubilation following their victory, there
was still some measure of trepidation in the pews that morning. The parish had
reopened without its popular and outspoken pastor, Fr. Ron Coyne, who had not
been reassigned to St. Albert or any other parish.

The new pastor, Fr. Laurence J. Borges, had served St. Albert in the
1990s. The whispering surrounding Borges the morning of June 19 was tainted
with a sort of well see tentativeness.

Borges passed the first test. He knew well the challenges he faced, and
he won thunderous -- yes, thunderous -- applause for the ending note of his
homily that day:

You and the parish, because of the experience of the almost 10
months of vigil, have changed. You have a deeper love and a greater loyalty for
your parish. Also, you learned a great deal about practical pastoral practice
because you were ministering to each other.

I, as your pastor, recognize this. I come here to work with you,
not for you.

It was a masterful stroke for Borges to acknowledge what may not have
been apparent: Through the vigil process, they had become a stronger, more
committed and more connected parish. They had changed.

The word one parishioner used to describe the Mass was
validation.

When a priest comes to this parish, Akoury said later,
the one thing they need to expect is that there will be lay involvement
in the everyday decision-making for the parish. The spiritual is the purview of
the pastor, but again there will be input from the prayer service
committee.

Raising the oft-cited shortage of priests in Boston, Akoury added,
We could be a model for the archdiocese.

It was no small delight to parishioners that day that their new
full-time pastor, though described by parishioners at St. Albert as
traditional, seemed ready to affirm that model.

Important, historic

Steve Krueger was the founding executive director of Voice of the
Faithful. The night he learned the St. Albert vigil was on, he drove to
Weymouth to have a look and to express his support. He remembers an air of
commitment and purpose and inside the chapel a sense of surprise: After all the
meetings and all the talk, the people in St. Albert were in vigil.

There were many questions that night, mostly unspoken, about where it
would all lead. But, Krueger said, he was struck by a sense that he was
in midst of something very important and, arguably, historic.

Today he believes the parishes that went into vigil or otherwise
resisted the reconfiguration process of OMalley are not only part of a
movement he had seen grow exponentially through Voice of the Faithful in the
wake of the sex abuse crises; they are themselves a movement.

On the heels of the difficult cluster process, Voice of the
Faithfuls Boston chapter sponsored a series of Parish Preservation
Summits, a forum for people despairing over what they viewed as another
major crisis in Boston. People came to the summits to vent and to ask,
Whats next?

Krueger, now a consultant to some of the suppressed parishes, was struck
by the number of Catholics in attendance with no previous affiliation with
Voice of the Faithful -- hundreds of them. There was a sense, Krueger said, of
a broader movement.

The summits culminated in a Mass on the historic Boston Common,
initiated to provide a shared worship space for suppressed parishes and to send
a message to the archdiocese. Thousands came and the Boston Herald, in
one of many supportive editorials from the citys major newspapers, wrote:
When more than a thousand Boston area Catholics gather on Boston Common
on a cold, misty Sunday in a show of faith, of solidarity and of protest,
its time archdiocesan officials took note. These are reasonable,
devoted people; they need to be treated as such.

Increasingly, though, people felt they were treated with indifference,
even contempt. Many of the Catholics interviewed for this article had made a
point to attend the screening of a Boston-made documentary film, Closed
On Sundays, which attempts to capture the controversy over closures in
the archdiocese. There is a scene in the film that, for many who saw it,
perfectly portrays the fissure in the archdiocese.

The scene takes place in Charlestown, where a handful of women from a
suppressed church stand across the street from one of the citys two
still-open churches with signs. They are waiting for OMalley to emerge
from a special Mass and are requesting a visit. The decision to close their
church, St. Catherine of Siena, was a mistake, the women were saying, just come
and see.

Eventually the archbishop comes out. He is wearing his trademark
Franciscan robe and he is alone except for one person, presumably an assistant.
Descending the church steps, he notices the women, who are calmly appealing to
him for a visit. He smiles, waves and then disappears into a waiting limousine
and drives away.

All he had to do, people say again and again, was cross the
street.

Taking a second look

In an attempt to mitigate reconfiguration fallout, OMalley
eventually appointed an external review committee with responsibility for
taking a second look at a handful of his decrees. For nine months -- from
October 2004 to July 2005 -- the committee met with suppressed parishes and
reviewed parish reports, charts and appeals. By the time the committee had
finished its work and made its recommendations, the archbishop had reversed
roughly one-quarter of his 83 suppression decrees. St. Albert and St. Anselm
were among those spared.

OMalleys appointment of an external review committee was
welcome news, but the large number of reversals, nearly one in four, elicited
more of an I told you so than a thank you from the people in the
pews. The reversals were as close as OMalley had come to explicitly
stating his process was flawed.

The committee was not the only beacon of hope for Boston Catholics
fighting the closures. The committee and others eventually consolidated their
growing influence and formed an advocacy organization, the Council of
Parishes.

A handful of parishes filed civil suits, claiming the property the
archdiocese was hoping to liquidate did not in fact belong to the
archdiocese.

Others appealed to Rome, citing the bankruptcy filings of the dioceses
of Spokane, Wash.; Portland, Ore.; and Tucson, Ariz. In each case, diocesan
lawyers insisted parish property did not belong to the chancery and was
therefore not made vulnerable to creditors. OMalley was claiming the
opposite, and appropriating not just parish property but parish funds and
pouring the money into the overspent Central Fund.

Perhaps the most dramatic action has been that of Massachusetts State
Sen. Marian Walsh, who drafted legislation that would require the archdiocese
of Boston, and all Massachusetts religious organizations that receive
charitable donations, to file an annual report like the more than 30,000
non-religious charities in the state. Walshs legislation quickly
attracted 35 cosponsors and the backing of Massachusetts Secretary of State
William Galvin. Walsh and Galvin are both lifelong Boston Catholics. If the
legislation is passed, and its chances are excellent, the archdiocese would
have to file an annual report disclosing key financial information, including
settlements and all property holdings.

Convinced there should be no sacred cows when it comes to
the millions of dollars Massachusetts taxpayers donate annually to religious
organizations, Walsh admits some discomfort in taking on her church in such a
public manner. The culture of the Catholic church is so strong,
Walsh told NCR. Its unfamiliar for us to be open, to be
transparent -- we are uncomfortable with the openness, so some of us conclude
that it is wrong.

Still, more and more of Bostons Catholics seem to have concluded
transparency is necessary. Four hours of public testimony for Walshs
religious charities legislation drew as many as 400 people Aug. 10, many of
them wearing large yellow buttons that read: ACCOUNTABILITY
NOW!

A spokesperson for the archdiocese, which provided written testimony
opposing the legislation but was not represented at the public hearing, told
NCR that it is simply time to move on and allow the archdiocese to
take a big, deep breath.

Acknowledging a small group out there that has continued to inject
itself throughout the archdiocese in a rather unfortunate manner, Terry
Donilon said, Its about time to turn down the rhetoric.

Reconfiguration, he said, was a process begun with the best of
intentions.

Its time to move beyond the process, he added,
and help heal the church here in Boston. Donilon said OMalley
was looking forward to having more space for a positive discussion on issues
close to his heart, such as social justice and poverty.

The prospects for deep breaths and moving on seem dim for now. One day
after Walshs packed hearing, the archdiocese acknowledged a verbal ruling
from the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome, which answered canonical appeals
from several Boston area parishes with an affirmation that the assets of
suppressed parishes cannot in fact be directly appropriated by the archdiocese,
as has been done throughout Bostons reconfiguration process. (See related
story.)

The church in Boston does need the assets of these closed
parishes to resurrect itself out of its financial difficulties, said
David Castaldi. But unless there is more financial disclosure -- with lay
involvement -- it will be difficult to get the credibility for support of just
giving the money from the parishes to the archdiocese.

Steve Krueger agrees. Clearly the archdiocese needs help. But they
cant expect to have Catholics just turn over the net proceeds that have
basically accrued from generations of donors.

Some observers insist that restoring a relationship of trust in the
archdiocese would require a reversal of behavior norms decades, even centuries,
in the making.

At this point, said Bernie Swain, people realize that
it was not just the protection of pedophiles and it was not just the cover-up.
The reconfiguration reveals a pattern of mismanagement of finances, of
properties and of personnel across the board for 20 years. It reveals blanket
incompetence.

That alleged incompetence is a matter of still more frustration for
Catholics in a city dense with problem solvers trained locally in some of the
most prestigious universities in the country.

Holding vigil or otherwise keeping a close watch on diocesan
developments have been attorneys, consultants, teachers and people who work in
public relations and finance. According to civil lawyer Mary Beth Carmody of
St. Jeremiah Parish in Framingham, the last parish to enter into vigil, the
diversity of voices speaking out against church decisions and management is not
an opposing force but absolutely a window into what would be
available to the archdiocese if ever leaders decided to turn to their flock for
the advice and assistance many believe they desperately need.

We keep telling the archdiocese that we are not dissident
Catholics, said Carmody. We are the core and foundation, we are the
parish council members, we are the parish finance council, we are the
confirmation teachers, the religious education teachers, the lectors and the
eucharistic ministers. We are the core of the Catholic church, and not only
that, we are their gold because we are the core that cares enough to
fight.

Jon Rogers is a parishioner at St. Francis X. Cabrini in Scituate and an
active member of his parish vigil. St. Francis is one of four parishes that
passed through the external review committees process with their
suppression and vigil intact. Rogers works in the investment industry, and like
many of Bostons Catholic professionals, he cannot reconcile his own sense
of institutional integrity with what he sees going on in his archdiocese. He is
fighting for his parish and his church and he is prepared for a long fight.

I basically look back at the past performance of any given
investment, Rogers said, and try to determine what the future is
going to hold for it.

And if you take the past performance of the archdiocese of
Boston, he said, a disclaimer would be required: Past performance
is not reflective of future results.

God, he added with a laugh and a shake of his head, I
would hope not.

Jeff Severns Guntzel is an NCR staff writer. His e-mail address
is jguntzel@natcath.org.